A Trip Through Writer’s Workshop
Or
What I Did During My Summer Vacation….
Imagine being given the unique opportunity to get up early in the summer to
attend a month long workshop, then returning home to cook dinner, run errands, and
“relax” with some heavy duty reading homework—and wanting to come back the next
day for more. This was the scene at Rider University, located in Mercer County, New
Jersey, when I first learned about the National Writing Project. This special workshop
changed my ideas about writing and the teaching of writing.
There we were, teachers from all walks of life and teaching environments. Urban
teachers, suburban teachers. Ready to retire teachers, beginning teachers. Technology
teachers, high school teachers, writing teachers. However, in spite of the overwhelming
diversity, there was one common strand throughout; these were teachers who wanted the
best for their students. Teachers willing to take the time, the effort, the energy to invest
in the best. The Trenton Area Writing Project was ready to begin!
In order to explore our literacy background, we spent time reflecting on our early
literacy memories. We cried, giggled, and chuckled with our new family as they read
stories about their early recollections of the written word. The exercise appeared to be
simplistic in the beginning, but little did we know that this application would give us a
chance to take a journey in the past so that we could also understand the literacy journey
that our students were undertaking. Not one story was the same, but the reoccurring
theme was the same. We wanted our students to gain the love of reading and writing that
we were blessed to have. We wanted them to be able to find a place to escape and to
learn and to be able to share that same experience with others.
My journey took me back to childhood memories that I hadn’t had the chance to
revisit in a long time and savor. It required me to make the phone call home to clarify a
few details. What surprised me was although my family did not have the monetary
ability to line the shelves with books, my parents imparted the love of reading and
learning to me through the local library and newspapers. My literary journey became
alive again as I focused on the sensual elements of my experience. I was able to run the
movie in my mind of walking home from the library, open book in hand, carefully gazing
upward as I crossed the intersection and praying that an oncoming car wouldn’t hit me.
My writing journal became a part of my life. I took it to the grocery store and to
the bookstore. I learned how to listen and to watch. I gathered seeds for ideas to plant in
my journal and seeds to set aside for the next season. My vacation wasn’t complete
without writing. I watched a homeless man cross the street in Baltimore. I realized that
before the writing project, I would have just seen a homeless man in a black and white
context. But now I saw a man’s story and it taught me to appreciate what I have. I saw
the incongruity of the lights of Baltimore Harbor, pleasure boats on the river, and a man
who had no hands but who held a Styrofoam cup in the hooked appendage that served as
his hand. Was he a war casualty or a drug casualty? My mind began to see a story
unraveling as I watched him. I couldn’t wait to get back to the room so that I could
release the memories in my mind and put them on paper.
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As I began the writing process with my students, my love of writing became
apparent to them. As I modeled spontaneously writing with them, they wanted to write.
Students wrote stories and poems. The changes in the seasons became more alive and
vivid to them. We walked outside, paused to watch the insects on the plants and listen to
the birds calling each other in the nearby woods. We stopped in the middle of a lesson to
gaze at the first snowfall. Boys raised their voices with indignation when I read the first
page of the novel, Love That Dog that announced, “Boys don’t write poems”.
The students in my class have a new appendage…their Writer’s Notebook. It is a
special treasure chest of their writing thoughts, dreams, and words. It contains their
memories, observations and descriptions, opinions, wonderings, wishes, stories, hobbies,
and loves...Ask them what they write about and they may turn to the first page and
answer, “My territories.” Territories are what belong to each student. It could be about a
pet that they like or dislike; first memories and bad memories; the “worst” like the worst
haircut. I have found that the more the more the students are given ownership of their
writing and the more purposeful it is, the more enthusiasm they have for writing. This in
turn, makes them want to write more and more. And the more that they write, the better
writers they become.
Do we worry about spelling and grammar? Absolutely. Since they the writing
that they do belongs to them and is important to them, the more they want it to be
“perfect”.
What do they do when they are done? Ah, poor students. In this class, they know
that a writer is never done. We look at each sentence and idea and try to enhance it…to
capture it in the mind’s eye. I ask them to freeze frame the idea or the description and
look at it through a magnifying glass. Can you make it come alive?
A new vocabulary has been introduced into the classroom…Mentor texts… We
learn about the writer’s craft and qualities of good writing. Power Writing….Just write
and write and write for five minutes…Editing and Revising. (Don’t be surprised if you
come into the class and you see students wearing editor’s visors. Portfolios of our
published pieces…Reflection…Take time to reflect on what you wrote and how you have
grown as a writer.
Celebrating has had a new meaning in the classroom. We started the year by
listening to the story, I Am in Charge of Celebrations. What do you do when you
celebrate your birthday? Eat! Celebrate a holiday? Eat! Publish your writing? Eat! Each
finished genre is a celebration of writing and eating.
The rewards are so many. From the student who has used his own money to
purchase Writer’s Notebook for his parents…to the students who moan when we have to
go to lunch (just one more sentence, please)…to the students who carry their Writer’s
Notebooks onto the playground… to the stories that are emailed to me during the
weekend, because (as one student said, “I was bored so I decided to write and then I
couldn’t stop writing.”
The writing journey does have its twists and turns. Sometimes the words are
stuck in our mind and need a gentle “push”; sometimes there just isn’t enough time;
sometimes we abandon pieces that we have spent days writing because we are not
satisfied with the way that the piece is going. However, the twists and turns have taught
us to believe in ourselves and that we are capable of beginning again and that the piece
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that we just don’t like today maybe something we can work on tomorrow. It gets saved
until we want to revisit it.
Just as this piece is unfinished, so is our Writer’s Workshop. We are constantly
learning more about writing and how to become like the writers that we admire. Most of
all, it has reaffirmed the belief that we are excellent writers and to believe in ourselves.
Sometimes after I read a selection that a student has written, I become “misty eyed” and
tell them that they will be famous authors someday. Make sure that you remember to
look at the New York Times Best Seller list in about ten year from now…You might
recognize one or more of the students’ names.
Linda Biondi
December 28, 2005
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